Remember Me
by LeilaEditer
Summary: "Link started crying, because suddenly he realized several things. First, it was the girl that occupied his mind lying on the rough asphalt. Secondly, although he had no idea what had happened, she was now dead. Lastly, Link knew without a doubt that whoever this girl was, he loved her." He didn't know what he was doing, but now he'll never remember. Oneshot/Zelink.


**Another one-shot, but before I get yelled at for procrastinating on Reality, I'm actually working on that now and this wasn't written by me. My dear friend Gabby wrote this, but didn't want to make an entire account to publish one one-shot. So please, review for her and tell her what you think, because she is an amazing writer!**

**~Leila and Gabby!**

* * *

If there was one thing Link Cardigon knew, it was the forest. He had grown up on the skirts of the dark woods and it was now littered with memories, like pop cans and candy wrappers left behind. Memories like his first time getting lost, when he had stumbled blindly through the sharp branches that had been friendly only moments ago, until suddenly he was being swept up into his mother's arms and having hushed reassurances whispered into his ear like a prayer,

"I've got you, Link. I'll always find you."

Since then he had always been wary of wandering from known areas, careful not to stray where his mother might not find him.

Yet here he was, with his sole intent as he ran through the trees being to get lost. Or more accurately, to escape the memories laid in the forest. Link usually found comfort in them; now all he wanted was somewhere untouched by him. By her.

Everywhere he looked, there she was! There was the spot they had a picnic together. Here was where she skinned her knee when they were eight and he had tried desperately to make her smile at him again. Only when a stupid bird pooped on his head did she forget her knee to laugh at him.

"Damnit, Zelda, why can't you just leave me alone?" he asked aloud. In the silence his voice sounded hoarse and echoed in a way that made him want to cover his ears. No one answered, as he knew no one would. What did he expect? For her to pop out from behind a tree and remind him that talking to yourself was the first sign of insanity? He could hear her voice as she would say it and saw her grin as she would roll her blue eyes at him.

Link was shaken from his thoughts as he sensed instinctively that he had gone to a part of the forest he hadn't yet been. To his surprise, the dense trees had parted to reveal a sunny clearing. Green grass and flowers carpeted the idyllic meadow where his eyes alighted upon some kind of round stone structure.

His curiosity teased, Link walked slowly towards it until he saw inside and realized what it was.

"Well, well, well, look what we have here!" Link announced with a smirk before realizing no one was with him. Again with the talking to himself!

The water inside gave away that it was indeed a well, yet he could see no pulley system for drawing water. Weird. Something glinted in the corner of his eyes, and he finally noticed a plaque on the rim of the well. He read the inscription aloud:

_I take only what you give from your mind_

_Oblivion I give, if forgetting is what you wish to find_

_But be warned, think before you cast,_

_For what are you if not your past?_

Link's brow furrowed as he read the plaque. _It couldn't possibly... _

Staring down as the murky water, it drew him in like a deer in the headlights. He couldn't look away, couldn't shed the feeling of someone dragging the very thoughts from his head.

"Zelda," the name fell from his lips unbidden as a barely audible whisper, even to his own ears. The surface of the waters rippled as though the words he spoke were a tangible object being dropped into it.

A cloud passed over the sun and he shivered. Colors and sounds went flashing through his head, each dredging up more memories. He rode his bicycle down a hill; now his father was teaching him to multiply fractions. Link clutched his head and cried out in pain. His head felt like it was being electrocuted.

For the first time in years he allowed himself to whisper, "Find me, Mom."

A wishful plea, and one that he knew could never be fulfilled again. He closed his eyes.

* * *

"What's wrong with your hand?" a small girl in a blue-and-white flowered dress asked a six year old Link. They were on the playground of their elementary school, and she was looking down at Link, who was about to go down the twisty slide. It was a beautiful blue-sky day, with a shining sun and puffy clouds.

"Nothin'," he replied, scowling. He looked at her wide blue eyes and limp blonde hair. He didn't like her. Girls had cooties- it was a well-accepted fact.

"There's a Band-Aid on it. That means you hurt your hand."

"Oh, right," Link said. He stood up and tried to look impressive. "Well, I saw Ganondorf as I-"

"_You_ saw Ganondorf?!" she interrupted incredulously. She bit her lip and looked at him fearfully. "But isn't he just a legend?"

"A legend? I can assure you he is, now that I've dealt with him," said Link seriously. "As I was saying, I saw that fiend slinking around so I grabbed my Master Sword and, well, dealt with him."

The girl had an unreadable expression on her face; years later Link could still picture that way the corners of her mouth curved up just barely in a suppressed smile.

"And your hand?" asked the blue-eyed girl. A boy in a gray shirt gave them a glower before pushing past her to go down the slide.

"Oh, that," he said dismissively. "I tripped and fell. In a pool of Ganondorf's blood, that is."

She just looked at Link for a moment, before breaking into a grin. "Thank you, Hero, for saving our humble little town."

Not sure if she was teasing or not, little Link nodded his head vigorously anyway. "Oh yeah, no problemo," he said, adding hesitantly, "Who are you?"

The girl in the flowered dress stiffened and turned her head so her face was partially obscured by a scraggly curtain of blond hair. It looked like gold, Link noted.

"Zelda Rosewood," she replied softly. "My family just moved from the countryside." She sighed. "There was a gang dabbling in evil magic that cursed the town. It...bad things started happening to people who lived there."

"Okay."

"'Okay'?! " Goddesses, boys are stupid!" she said angrily, turning to face him again. Her eyes had narrowed to a laser glare. "That's really all you can say? How about you at least tell me your name, chatter boy?"

"My name's Link." he said sheepishly, taken aback.

The recess supervisor blew her whistle and every child turned to look before running after her like goslings after their mother goose. Link turned to leave, with a wave to Zelda, when she grabbed his wrist and locked her eyes onto his.

Her intense gaze unnerved him with the way she seemed to look through him. Link thought for a fleeting moment that her eyes were the same sapphire blue as Nayru's in the stained glass window of the local temple. "I wish you really were the Hero, Link," she said quietly, "Then maybe you could take me away, to a faraway land."

Link opened his eyes a crack_. I was going to take you away_, he thought. _I spent ten years trying to be your Hero._

* * *

He sat up groggily, not remembering falling down. He was shaken from the vivid onslaught of memory. It wasn't like reflecting on an event; it felt like he was back on that playground slide again. Wasn't he trying to _escape_ these memories?

Suddenly he noticed that the air had dropped in temperature, and he looked at the well. Link gasped.

In a circle around the well, all of the soft green grass was now brown and brittle. Dead. The well itself seemed to have a silvery aura around it, and as Link walked closer, he saw that the water looked like quicksilver. There was something...wrong about this well. Link's intuition was screaming at him to leave, to go before something more happens to him, but his feet felt like they were rooted in place, looking over the rim.

The memories continued coursing through his head, like colored confetti blowing on a wind. _Make it _stop_! _ Link was forced to observe and relive every smile, joke, fight, and experience that Zelda and he had ever shared.

And the worst part was that he knew he was going crazy, for in head he saw scenes that he didn't remember living. In a verdant tunic, he twirled a gowned Zelda in a ballroom. In the reflection of a gleaming sword, he adjusted a leaf-green hat. He bowed before a regal Zelda, adorned with a beautiful crown.

"What the hell is happening to me?" he choked out, as tears started streaming down his face. Was he losing the small vestiges of sanity left to him? Perhaps. In vain, he tried to remember why it mattered so much; he was already lost when he fled the funeral and headed towards the forest hours ago.

* * *

_Crunch_. Link bit into the brilliant red apple as he sat hunched on an overturned tree. The fruit's vivid color stood out from the boy's black attire. Suddenly, he spun around at the noise of a snapping twig.

"Who- who's there?" Link hated the way the huskiness of his voice made it sound as though he'd been crying, which he had.

Someone stepped out from behind a large tree. It was a girl with shining blonde hair, but her face was oddly blurred, as though Link couldn't quite process what she looked like. He thought her mouth formed words and knew that she had offered her condolences for his parents' tragic car accident, but he just couldn't hear her voice as she said these things.

"It's the curse. I know it," he responded. "My parents thought that by moving away, we'd be free from it, but they were wrong."

_Don't say that,_ she'd told him. Again, no sound was heard, yet he knew that was what she said. She added hesitantly_, It was a car crash. An accident, Link. Don't you _dare_ say that you're cursed._

He knew that the girl was Zelda, and that he cared about her. A lot. He felt a twisting sensation in his chest as he thought about how she would look in the wreckage of a car accident: broken and pale, like a discarded doll, with shards of glass glinting in her matted hair like a twisted parody of a tiara. He wanted, with all of his heart, to believe that he wasn't tainted by any curse.

And with the way she was looking at him, he found it a simple matter to push down any doubt in his mind. She _had_ to be right.

* * *

What color were Zelda's eyes? How could Link forget the face of the most beautiful girl he had ever seen? They were green weren't they? No, that was the color of his own eyes. He desperately tried to remember the sound of her laugh. Was it like the tinkling of a wind chime, or did it remind him of the baying of a hound?

He had finally realized why it mattered to him, forgetting Zelda. No matter the pain she caused, he had so much joy and fondness that was all due to her. When he first entered the forest, he thought the pain was too much to pay for the good memories.

Now Link was scared. Zelda was a part of him. What would happen to him without that part of his life? If you have a toothache, is it better to keep that tooth and bear the pain, or to rip it out entirely and live without it?

Yes, Zelda was gone. That door was closed. But whenever people die, everyone talks about how they live on in your memories. It's just another one of those crappy little pearls of wisdom that is supposed to make you feel better. Although it never does, Link actually wanted to hold on to his memories of her now, for those were some of the happiest in his life.

Link sucked in a breath with shock suddenly. He didn't know her name. It danced on the tip of his tongue, for he knew that he had said it a million times: softly, shouting, angrily, and sometimes in murmurs as he slept. Somehow, though, it was gone.

The pain in his head was receding as little details vanished. When he tried to call a picture of her to mind, he pulled nothing but a blank. He had no idea how or when they met, and of any of the things that they would do together. Then Link blacked out.

When Link came back to consciousness for what seemed to be the umpteenth time that day, he couldn't shake a feeling that he knew some girl. She was his age and he knew her very well. She was important to him, but he had no actual memories of her- wait, just one.

All he could remember was a dark alley at night, with a cloaked figure. He saw in his mind someone lying on the ground.

Link started crying, because suddenly he realized several things:

First, it was the girl that occupied his mind lying on the rough asphalt.

Secondly, although he had no idea what had happened, she was now dead.

Lastly, Link knew without a doubt that whoever this girl was, he loved her.

* * *

A bird chirped nearby. Link was standing in a strange meadow he had never seen. Oddly, he couldn't remember walking there. His face felt strangely warm and he raised his hand to it. Link frown in confusion as it came away wet with what could only be tears. An uncomfortable feeling that he had forgotten something nagged at the back of his mind, like the feeling he'd get on the bus when he forgot his math notebook at home. He looked around the clearing again, but it was completely empty. Shaking his head in confusion, he turned slowly to walk back home.

* * *

When Zelda awoke in complete darkness, the first thing she noticed was that her hands were bound behind her and she was tied to a chair.

Choking back panic, she tried to remember what had last happened to her. There had been a dark alley, a thick smoke. She saw Link's face twisted with anguish and seeing his face made her yearn for his arms around her. Thoughts of Link made her feel stronger, and so when her eyes adjusted enough to see a figure standing near her, she didn't scream.

"Who are you?" was all she could say. The picture of Link's face was the only thing that stopped her voice from cracking in fear.

The figure, who she could see was a man, leaned in close to her face. In the darkness Zelda could hardly make out the sharp features and glassy eyes, but she could clearly see the crooked grin at her that made her stomach twist in horror. When he spoke, his breath somehow smelled like ashes. "Why, I'm just here to deliver a message from a _very_ old friend of yours." He laughed like it was some private joke and looked at her as though she was a particularly interesting specimen in a museum.

His gaze made her want to squirm and she found the courage to respond, "I'm not afraid of whatever you've taken me for."

His smile dropped only slightly. "_You lie,_" he hissed.

He didn't know it, but Zelda was telling the truth. She wasn't afraid because she knew that there was someone who loved her more than anything and would stop at nothing until he found her.


End file.
